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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

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From a modern Muslim Cleric: “There Is A Beating Etiquette”

From a modern Muslim cleric: “There Is A Beating Etiquette.”

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

One comment

  • Kelly Starks

    For more detail on this tidbit of etiquette

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E30kBYzPEoA

    http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2600.htm
    Egyptian Cleric Sa’d Arafat: Islam Permits Wife Beating Only When She Refuses to Have Sex with Her Husband

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/247641/annals-sharia-allah-honored-wives-instating-punishment-beatings-andy-mccarthy
    Annals of Sharia: ‘Allah honored wives by instating the punishment of beatings’
    September 23, 2010 5:24 P.M.
    By Andrew C. McCarthy
    That’s from the avuncular Muslim cleric Sa’d Arafat, from an interview on Al-Nas TV in Egypt last February, featured by the invaluable MEMRI. You can watch the interview excerpt here. And, since we certainly wouldn’t want to take the sheikh out of context, here’s a transcript (presented without further comment because, well, what more can you say?):
    Interviewer: Wife beating is a serious accusation [leveled against Islam]. Let us examine this matter bit by bit.
    Sa’d Arafat: Allah honored wives by instating the punishment of beatings.
    Interviewer: Honored them with beatings? How is this possible?
    Sa’d Arafat: The prophet Muhammad said: “Don’t beat her in the face, and do not make her ugly.” See how she is honored. If the husband beats his wife, he must not beat her in the face. Even when he beats her, he must not curse her. This is incredible! He beats her in order to discipline her.
    In addition, there must not be more than ten beatings, and he must not break her bones, injure her, break her teeth, or poke her in the eye. There is a beating etiquette. If he beats to discipline her, he must not raise his hand high. He must beat her from chest level. All these things honor the woman.
    She is in need of discipline. How should the husband discipline her? Through admonishment. If she is not deterred, he should refuse to share the bed with her. If she is not repentant, he should beat her, but there are rules to the beating. It is forbidden to beat her in the face or make her ugly. When you beat her, you must not curse her. Islam forbids this.
    Interviewer: With what should be beat her? With his bare hand? With a rod?
    Sa’d Arafat: If he beats her, the beatings should not be hard, so that they do not leave a mark. He can beat her with a short rod. He must avoid beating her in the face or in places in the head where it hurts. The beatings should be on the body and should not come one right after the other. These are all choices made during the process, but beatings are allowed only as a last resort. […]
    The honoring of the wife in Islam is also evident in the fact that the punishment of beating is permissible in one case only: when she refuses to sleep with him.
    Interviewer: When she refuses to sleep with him?
    Sa’d Arafat: Yes, because where else could the husband go? He wants her, but she refuses….

    http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/003-wife-beating.htm

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